NetGalley Top Reviewer

NetGalley Top Reviewer
NetGalley Top Reviewer

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Today's review...

3.0 out of 5 stars Ho hum...skip it, you've already read one just like it.


This is formulaic fiction at best and convoluted storytelling at worst. The best way to sum up The Eleventh Victim by Nancy Grace is to say that there is nothing new and fresh here -- everything in the book has been written and read by anyone who likes thrillers. I found myself just plodding along, eager to be finished so I could move on to something more interesting.

The plot is typical -- a former beautiful and athletic female prosecutor of serial killers is burnt out and has fled Georgia for NY and instead of being a lawyer, she's now a psychologist. Then the conflict: uh oh, a former conviction she obtained has been overturned and now the bad guy is out. And guess who he wants to kill next? The ex attorney Hailey Dean, however, through some unbelievable inability to stay informed, doesn't realize that he has been released from death row due to a shift in votes on the appellate level. We are then treated to a tabloid-like look into the sleazy politics involving that judge's ambitions to be Georgia's governor. This leads to yet another side story that did nothing but annoy me. The whole digression into the plight of construction of tourist high rise condominiums on St. Simons Island in Georgia was completely unnecessary to the main narrative and I found it distracting and uninteresting. The author skips all around in the book from one little subplot to the next and back again. Most of it irrelevant to the main story line.

The climax of the book is totally predictable and you will find yourself skimming the last several chapters just to finally reach an unsatisfying conclusion.

My recommendation -- Skip it. As I said, you've already read this story.

2 comments:

  1. bummer. I was hoping it would be good. I wonder if she has ever written any true crime? Perhaps that would be a better fit for Nancy Grace?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perhaps she should have followed the rule of fiction: write about what you know.

    ReplyDelete